RAID mobo and one harddrive

[mealeyma]

Hey Guys-

In the new rig I will be building, I plan on buying one HD to start, with the option of expanding and using the board's RAID abilities. First off, you can plug in only one IDE drive to a board with RAID, right? Also, does it matter which connecter you would plug the one drive into? Thanks in advance guys

[yngwie98]

On most mobos yes, you can use the RAID controller for only 1 HD or other IDE devices. On some mobos such as my GA-7VRXP, you'll want to change it to ATA, otherwise it will take longer to bootup when it tries to detect a RAID array.
For ATA 66/100/133 cables: blue -> mobo, black -> master, grey -> slave. As far as which IDE port you use, only difference would be if you have more than one HD, drive letters would change. So for example - if you have a fast ATA 100/133 7200 RPM HD, put it on primary, and a second older/slower drive put it on secondary. If you connect them the opposite way, you older/slower drive would be C instead of D (assuming it has only 1 partition.

[mealeyma]

thanks a ton- very informative

one question though - when you mentioned your Gigabyte mobo, you said you need to switch it to ATA...are you referring to a jumper option, or something in the bios?